14 September 2014

Anna Case Lets Her Hair Down for the Anthem

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key's composition of "The Star-Spangled Banner".  Immensely popular beginning with its first appearance in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20, 1812, it still took more than 100 years to be officially recognized.  President Woodrow Wilson authorized the song's use as our national anthem in 1916.



Anna Case with flag unfurled, 1917.



It took less than a year for Hillsborough's own Anna Case to become the nation's most renowned interpreter of the anthem.

13 October 1918 New York Times
A popular 1917 Edison Diamond Disc recording and innumerable concert performances over the next decade, combined to make Anna Case as intertwined with "The Star-Spangled Banner" as Kate Smith would later become with "God Bless America". (A song written in 1918 by Anna Case's future son-in-law, Irving Berlin!)


16 June 1941 Courier News



For more about Anna and the Anthem, check out my previous piece here.